Hi, I'm clearly new here. I've been playing for about 7 months now, been jumpy with what I play but mainly stick to drop C. I was hoping if you could give me some tips on my technique and form as I feel I am very sloppy and I'm sure after you watch the video, you'll agree too. Here I try play Open Arms To Damnation by Born of Osiris. I mainly play difficult stuff as to push through my limitations.

I have trouble with the "hammer-on" section, I'm not sure what you would call it, but I always get noise from other strings, obviously because I hit them in the process. All help and criticism appreciated. Thanks.

Hi, I'm clearly new here. I've been playing for about 7 months now, been jumpy with what I play but mainly stick to drop C. I was hoping if you could give me some tips on my technique and form as I feel I am very sloppy and I'm sure after you watch the video, you'll agree too. Here I try play Open Arms To Damnation by Born of Osiris. I mainly play difficult stuff as to push through my limitations.

I have trouble with the "hammer-on" section, I'm not sure what you would call it, but I always get noise from other strings, obviously because I hit them in the process. All help and criticism appreciated. Thanks.

Video is private, no one else can watch it. If you want people to be able to watch it but not search to find it you need to make it public and unlisted.

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R.I.P. My Signature. Lost to us in the great Signature Massacre of 2014.

currently its to become a decent shred guitarist, mostly to play and compose neoclassical, power metal, melodic death metal. you know lots of arpeggios, progressions and stuff. blazing resolving solos.

currently its to become a decent shred guitarist, mostly to play and compose neoclassical, power metal, melodic death metal. you know lots of arpeggios, progressions and stuff. blazing resolving solos.

To be honest, none of that actually matters. You just need more good practice; like I said, slow down and make sure you're playing well before you go for playing fast. If you play well enough then the speed will come when you need it.

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R.I.P. My Signature. Lost to us in the great Signature Massacre of 2014.

To be honest, none of that actually matters. You just need more good practice; like I said, slow down and make sure you're playing well before you go for playing fast. If you play well enough then the speed will come when you need it.

Im going to practice more from now on. last it was 1.5 hours a day, now atleast 3.

Hey everyone , so I've been playing for nearly 1 year and am self-taught so am not sure about my technique so far ..thats why i uploaded this video to ask you guys to criticize my technique and if u can give me a full in-depth analyze i will be really pleased ^_^

Thanks for the honest feedback, much appreciated; I think this steers me in a better direction.

My real problem is that I don't really live around other musicians. Most of the time I actually find that I am the most knowledgeable and skilled guitarist in the groups I am around. I actually showed people (nonmusicians) an older, shittier recording of that song on soundcloud about a year ago and they thought I was playing since age 5 or something. This leads to me not having a clue what I am doing except for trial and error and what I can get out of UG.

Hey everyone , so I've been playing for nearly 1 year and am self-taught so am not sure about my technique so far ..thats why i uploaded this video to ask you guys to criticize my technique and if u can give me a full in-depth analyze i will be really pleased ^_^

Your rhythm playing is good in my opinion; tight, focused movements, consistent timing, good stuff.

The lead playing isn't so good. You need to watch your muting a lot, I can hear strings ringing through some parts of what you're doing. Your movements while alternate picking are definitely on the large side although I have seen much worse. You also need to watch the notes ringing together during the more complex sequenced sweeps, like from about 3:06 onwards you let a lot of notes ring together which is obviously the opposite of how sweeping should be.

I think what is probably a large part of the issue is that you keep your wrist in the same position all the time; it needs to move as you change strings. You should move from the elbow to keep your wrist at a good neutral angle to the strings as much as possible. The wrist still does the picking motions for straight alternate picking, small sweeps and really quick string skips (Paul Gilbert, Scarified type ideas) but you should be shifting the position of your hand/wrist as you move across the strings.

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R.I.P. My Signature. Lost to us in the great Signature Massacre of 2014.

In the last 6 months I've been really focusing on learning the Pentatonics in all positions across the board, in all keys. I'm also doing alot of major scale stuff and I think it's coming along nicely. I'm really looking at blues and rock & roll guitar playing really, it's mainly what I'm into. Hendrix, Led Zep, SRV, Guns & Roses, QOTSA etc. Although I didn't really use a lot of riffs from those guys in this recording, I was just jamming really.

Still, I'd like some input. I picked a backing track and then jammed along with it and recorded it, I done 3 versions and this was the worst so I thought I might as well get that analysed. I know that there are some moments out of time and stuff, but sometimes that's the nature of improvisation. It's something to work on in any case.

I'd like to know what you think about the phrasing, as it's mostly my own riffs, and the pitch when bending, how clean etc.

It's my Gibson LP Traditional through my Fender Super 60 with the Eric Johnson Fuzz Face. It's on the bridge position, even though it looks like it's set to the neck, I had to tighten the switch and put it the wrong way round when I put it back together, doh!

Anyway, thanks!

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Quote:

Originally Posted by Shredwizard445

Go ahead and spend your money, I don't care. It won't make you sound better.

What's the technique called where you mute the strings but play one. It's noticeable on this video where Jack is awesome. It's during 03:07 and 03:13 where he does it a couple of times.

Is it basically just doing the SRV thing where you mute all the strings except one and attack the lot, which leads to a muting effect on the rest of the strings as you rake them?

Thanks

It's not quite the same as the SRV thing, in terms of the fretting hand it's more or less the same but you need to attack the strings a little slower - almost like a sweep across the dead strings below the one you want to sound. That's what gives you the exaggerated sound.

In terms of names I've heard it called "raking" but that's a very poorly defined term when it comes to guitar, I've not really come across a name for it that satisfies me.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mephaphil

Also, I thought I might as well get myself assessed!

In the last 6 months I've been really focusing on learning the Pentatonics in all positions across the board, in all keys. I'm also doing alot of major scale stuff and I think it's coming along nicely. I'm really looking at blues and rock & roll guitar playing really, it's mainly what I'm into. Hendrix, Led Zep, SRV, Guns & Roses, QOTSA etc. Although I didn't really use a lot of riffs from those guys in this recording, I was just jamming really.

Still, I'd like some input. I picked a backing track and then jammed along with it and recorded it, I done 3 versions and this was the worst so I thought I might as well get that analysed. I know that there are some moments out of time and stuff, but sometimes that's the nature of improvisation. It's something to work on in any case.

I'd like to know what you think about the phrasing, as it's mostly my own riffs, and the pitch when bending, how clean etc.

It's my Gibson LP Traditional through my Fender Super 60 with the Eric Johnson Fuzz Face. It's on the bridge position, even though it looks like it's set to the neck, I had to tighten the switch and put it the wrong way round when I put it back together, doh!

Anyway, thanks!

I think you really need to free yourself rhythmically - you're very much stuck in a straight 4th/8th/16th framework which gives you a very mechanical sound, at least to my ears. There's a section around 0:42 where you go in to a triplet feel and that's really the only section of the jam that I feel has much life to it.

You also spend a lot of time really cutting the notes short so you don't really get much vibrato in, again it sounds very mechanical. Don't be afraid to sit on a note, hold it for ages and really give it some strong vibrato, even if you have to pick it multiple times to get it to keep sounding.

Technically there's nothing terrible going on; I don't get the feeling you're really pushing yourself physically so there's really not much to comment on there - it's all functional and clean. Bending is pretty absent from what I can hear so it's hard to judge that as well. The fact that you know it's something you need to pay attention to is a good thing though - you know what you're aiming for which is the most important thing, beyond that it's all developing your ear so you know when you're in tune.

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R.I.P. My Signature. Lost to us in the great Signature Massacre of 2014.

I think you're right, I should be looking at pushing myself a little more. I do find it quite hard to play 16th note riffs even though I know I can do it. I think it's just that I don't know the riffs, but I'm gonna be focusing on some actual artists a bit more as most of my riffs are my own.

I know its not about speed, but I always seem to be in 4 and 8 note licks and I want to expand into some faster stuff. The few faster licks I played were Hendrix like really, and I want to know more of them really. I can play loads of Slash stuff but it's not really the same.

Any thoughts on some songs to look at to inspire me to learn some more 16th and triplet based stuff? I'm thinking about Pride & Joy by SRV.

I also have been testing my bends and they are in pitch, which is good. I think I'm at a stage where I'm now fluent on the scales, in all positions and am aware where all the roots are. So now I need to become more musical with it.

I'll take what you've advised on board and see what I can come up with

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Quote:

Originally Posted by Shredwizard445

Go ahead and spend your money, I don't care. It won't make you sound better.

I think you're right, I should be looking at pushing myself a little more. I do find it quite hard to play 16th note riffs even though I know I can do it. I think it's just that I don't know the riffs, but I'm gonna be focusing on some actual artists a bit more as most of my riffs are my own.

I know its not about speed, but I always seem to be in 4 and 8 note licks and I want to expand into some faster stuff. The few faster licks I played were Hendrix like really, and I want to know more of them really. I can play loads of Slash stuff but it's not really the same.

Any thoughts on some songs to look at to inspire me to learn some more 16th and triplet based stuff? I'm thinking about Pride & Joy by SRV.

I also have been testing my bends and they are in pitch, which is good. I think I'm at a stage where I'm now fluent on the scales, in all positions and am aware where all the roots are. So now I need to become more musical with it.

I'll take what you've advised on board and see what I can come up with

Well when I say pushing yourself I mean purely for the purposes of judging your technique; I think the only way you can really judge your technique is if you're doing something you feel is right on the edge of your abilities. If it's at the edge of what you feel like you can do but your technique is still good you're probably doing something right

What I mean about being more rhythmically free is playing things that are less precisely linked to the backing, whether that's polyrhythms that you can easily defined like triplets or doing something that feels completely detached from the rhythm underneath to you. Obviously you don't want to rely on this too much, if you do it all the time you lose your listeners entirely, not that playing for other people is something I really believe in very much (I generally think you should play for yourself) but listening from other people's point of view can be very helpful in identifying how you want to sound.

For my part at least this is something that comes up a lot in legato playing, very often I have a place to start and a place I want to end in terms of harmony and rhythm but the space in the middle is entirely undefined. What I end up playing in the middle is often just "fast legato" and I'm entirely unaware of how it falls in relation to the beats in the middle; as long as it ends in the right place it doesn't really matter because it's a line rather than anything else - the texture is what matters rather than the exact content.

Watch this:

Greg talks about a lot of things that I think people should think about more and gives some pretty good examples of what he's talking about. You're obviously not a player like him but the concepts he talks about are really good in general so there's something for everyone in there.

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R.I.P. My Signature. Lost to us in the great Signature Massacre of 2014.

It's a good video. Thank you. I'll definitely be referring back to it.

What I really think a large part of my issue amounts to is the fact that my lick repertoire is kinda low. I'm relying on stuff I've made up and stuff from songs that I've been able to add in that works. And I can play stuff like the sweet child solo, all along the watchtower solo, stairway etc. Stuff that is 120bpm but can't run scales like that. I'm not looking for speed, but I think the speed that I play at, in quarter notes and half notes with some rare triplets thrown in makes my stuff sound samey and boring. I don't think I'm in a rut as such, but I'm definitely ready to expand and I don't think it's too hard a thing to do. I've spent a lot of time familiarising myself with the pentatonic and blues scale that I know it back to back everywhere, so now it's time to work on the actual musical side of it as I'm fluent in the theory.

What I'm getting at is, the 'rut' I'm in is down to two things I think. Not having enough of a lick bank, and not knowing licks in enough time signatures. I can play in different time signatures when learning songs, so I think I'm going to learn songs that are lick and riff based with multiple time signatures and study the songs so I know where the licks are being used, learn them in multiple positions and understand the time signature. And also play scales with a metronome.

Thoughts?

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Quote:

Originally Posted by Shredwizard445

Go ahead and spend your money, I don't care. It won't make you sound better.

Yeah, I wouldn't think in licks, but in concepts. John Wheatcroft has this great approach to improvising, saying that memorizing 100's of licks is the equivalent of waking up, planning and remembering every word your gonna say for the day.

Get together 4 or 5 different concepts, and you'll find that a load of licks will spawn from that single concept.

That makes sense, although I do feel that learning songs is a good and fun way to learn all three of the things that you mentioned.

I'm not 100% what you mean by 2 and 3 though. Would you care to elaborate?

I seem to have trouble with 16 note and triplets. I understand it but I can't play fast enough to get 4 notes per beat in, but then again, I can do it with songs I've learned so I don't know what my ****ing problem is, not knowing the licks, or not having made them up? I just don't play in those time signatures, I always stick to 1/2 and 1/4 notes with the rare triplets I play coming from solos from songs I know.

I'm gonna go back to my teacher and get him to specifically work on phrasing with me for a while, I haven't had a lesson in a few months and I've had enough of major scale theory for a while lol, its time to get musical. But in the meantime I'll take whatever advice you give me

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Quote:

Originally Posted by Shredwizard445

Go ahead and spend your money, I don't care. It won't make you sound better.